After students finish up their final exams and say farewell to the Forest Grove campus, the Conference and Events Support Services (CESS) team at Pacific University remains hard at work, organizing, preparing and staging campus for its next scheduled event.
According to CESS Senior Director Lois Hornberger, CESS works to help organize and schedule both university and non-university events on the Forest Grove campus throughout each year.
“We will help and work with anybody,” Hornberger said. “We usually have clients come in and sit down with us, and then we go over their timeline and everything and make sure it works.”
CESS provides additional resources and services to the organizations they work with in the form of assistance with outside catering management, technology help and logistic tactics for planning out events. Hornberger said the CESS team has remained busy during the first semester and are now currently in the process of working with the Performing Arts Series in support of the Dec. 9 Sonos Handbell Choir performance. However, the busy time of year for the CESS offi ce is still just around the corner, as the team will start preparing for summer conferences at the start of 2018.
According to Hornberger, the CESS staff will also begin looking to hire students who are interested in assisting with summer conferences at the start of the spring semester.
“We like to have our students hired before spring break so they know whether they are going to have a job here with us, or not,” Hornberger said. “It’s not an eight to five everyday work schedule, we need our student workers at all times and hours.”
The CESS team will hold training sessions for the hired students before they officially start work at the beginning of summer break. Hornberger said the next big event the CESS staff will be helping to support is the annual Stars in the Grove show.
“It’s a night that brings together talented people from Forest Grove, and other surrounding areas,” Hornberger said. “It’s always been a fundraiser for a non-profit arts organization in Forest Grove.”
CESS will also be working on back-to-back Pacific commencements, with one in May and the other in August for the graduate programs.
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